THE PREDATOR HUNTERS AND HUNTED

by James A. Moore

  The creature charged after the car and then stopped and braced. A moment later another blast of energy ripped from that damned shoulder cannon and blew the right front side of the engine into shreds.

  Someone answered him on the radio.

  “It’s Rodriguez. Who is this?” The voice was almost challenging.

  “This is Hyde of the Reapers. We have people down and need them extracted.”

  “The Reapers? Aren’t you under quarantine?”

  “Not with that thing loose. Your team is gone, every last one of them. Get your ass over here and help me extract my survivors.”

  He could just see Rodriguez doing the math. The guy had been ordered to stay put—otherwise he would’ve been there long ago. Hyde had no authority over him, but he had a very serious reputation as a killer.

  He decided to play on his rep.

  “Don’t piss me off, Rodriguez,” he growled. “I have a thing to finish killing.”

  The pilot let out a stream of Hispanic obscenities.

  That was all the time Hyde had. The alien had ripped off the driver’s side door and was peeling one of the cops from the damaged car. The guy was already bleeding, and he screamed as the creature looked him in the face.

  Hyde limped in closer as carefully as he could. The deputy started fighting, doing his best, but the man was seriously outclassed.

  The other side of the car opened and another deputy came out shooting. The first bullet hit the alien in the arm. The second bullet hit the deputy dangling in the creature’s hand. Whether or not it killed him, Hyde could not say, but the guy went silent. All he knew for certain was that the damned thing was ignoring him for a few more seconds.

  That was all the time he needed.

  Three steps closer and the creature turned, looking down at him.

  He’d have preferred to hit it from behind.

  From four feet away he unloaded the sheriff’s SIG Sauer P226 into the alien’s chest. It staggered backward, eyes closed in pain as bullet after bullet tore through the meat and bone and exited through the back of the damned beast.

  It should have dropped. It should have died.

  The blades came around in a savage arc and though he tried, Hyde couldn’t elude them. He was simply too close.

  Jermaine Hyde went down hard. Only the certainty that he had killed the alien would help him into whatever afterlife might have awaited.

  29

  He was dying. He had killed the last of the things that hunted him; the other two were dying if not already dead. He was dying and now he had two choices—leave, or stay and destroy his property.

  One of the new creatures came for him, firing its weapon. He threw his disc again and watched as the thing fell into separate parts.

  He had to leave. If he could make his ship he could still get home. He could still mend. He could find all of his weapons and manage to hide all evidence that he had been here.

  The wounds in his chest were agony.

  He was dying. Dying!

  No. He had not come here to die. He had come here to hunt and to gather his trophies. He would return home. He would tell tales of his time here and he would show his new collection proudly.

  He ran only a few hundred paces before he collapsed in the mud. His breaths were a collection of broken, shattered, painful gulps that failed to fill his lungs with even the thin air of the local atmosphere.

  Opening the cover on his gauntlet, he stared at the control buttons. The pain crawled through him and made his eyes blur. His eyes, and his thoughts alike.

  * * *

  Tomlin stared at the metal spear for a long while as he held his insides in place. He did his best to watch the fight. Sometimes he saw something and other times he faded away.

  Dying. He was dying. He knew it. There wasn’t a thing for it except to hope that the others finished the job and killed the alien hunter.

  If he’d been able to catch a breath he would have cheered when Hyde blew the back out of the alien. He’d have cried when the alien cut Hyde’s face in half and split him most of the way down to his crotch, too.

  The police showed up, and then they died.

  Hill was down. He was probably dead, too.

  The damned alien was moving. It started to run toward the south, toward the Okefenokee, and then it fell flat. He watched as it crawled a few feet, wheezing and coughing and feeling almost as shitty as he did. He didn’t want to cheer anymore. He just wanted it to be over.

  It looked like the only one who was going to end all of this was him.

  Tomlin made it to his knees. It was hard, damn it. It was maybe the hardest thing he’d ever done in his entire life, and then he looked down at that damned alien spear again. He reached out, let his hand touch it.

  The metal was cold and it was surprisingly light. He pulled it closer and stuck the pointy end into the ground. It slid a little before punching into the soil and staying put.

  One hand stayed on his stomach—he was almost certain that if he let that hand fall away, his guts were going to slop on out and spill all over the ground. If that happened, friends and neighbors, he was damn sure he’d never pull them back into his body before he died.

  It took an eternity to stand up. During that time the rain fell, and lightning flashed, and thunder crashed. A few million raindrops hit his face and body. Still, he persisted. It was important that he get all the way to his feet, though he was having trouble remembering why.

  There was something he had to do. Something important, too, because if he didn’t do it, he was pretty sure Pappy was going to yell at him. Sure, Pappy was dead and he knew that, but it didn’t matter. Pappy would be pissed off and an angry Pappy was never a good thing.

  Another flash of lightning, and then he saw the alien where it lay. It was moving something on its arm and waving long taloned fingers over that spot. Something Pappy had said about the aliens buzzed in his head, and he tried to focus.

  “Oh. Shit. Bomb.” He shook his head. “No, no, no, no…” Tomlin moved. It wasn’t exactly his best time. He was moving slower than his granddaddy when he was using his walker, but he was moving and that was the part that mattered.

  He headed for the alien and—

  * * *

  When he could think again he was looking down at the mud and most of his weight was leaning on the spear that he’d been using to hold him upright. By some miracle his hand was still holding his insides where they belonged, and it didn’t look like anything important had leaked out, but he could feel too much warmth running down his abdomen and his crotch.

  “Shit.” He barely heard himself speak.

  The alien was still there. It wasn’t moving much but it was still there. That had to count.

  He moved forward again, trying to remember what was going on, what he had to do. It was important. He knew that. He knew the alien was part of it. The damned thing was panting and shaking. It was dying, he was sure of it, and he felt a surge of savage joy at the idea. That would show it not to mess with the Reapers.

  Tomlin uttered a barely sane laugh as he moved closer to the hunter. The faceplate of its gauntlet was open and red characters were flashing down. A series of beeps came from the thing, each one a tiny bit louder, just a touch faster.

  Tomlin stared and stared, uncertain what he should do or why the noises were making him nervous. He was nervous, no two ways about it. There was something important about it.

  His anger was sudden and irrational but he ran with it. Though it hurt him to do so, he lifted the spear with both hands and drove it down into the shifting characters on the gauntlet. There was a heavy electrical discharge and the flashing lights stopped.

  “That’ll show you.”

  The words were slurred and barely coherent. Something wet happened along the front of his uniform and Tomlin looked down to see parts of him falling toward the running water and puddles below.

  “What the hell did you do, Tomlin?”

  He didn’t recognize the voic
e. A hand caught him as he started to fall backward. The world crashed into darkness.

  30

  Rodriguez found the corpses. Lots of corpses. The men who’d come with him were toast. Every last one of them. Some of them had been pulled apart or skinned or both. A few were missing their heads.

  He didn’t worry about the dead. The fact was that corpses were easier to make disappear than live people. The locals might wonder what happened to a body or two, but they’d shut up and ignore them if the right pressure was applied—and there were people working for Stargazer who knew what sort of pressure to apply.

  Living witnesses were a different situation, and to that end he collected what was left of Tomlin and carried him to the copter as fast as he could, horrified by what was trying to spill out of his stomach. Tomlin made noises. He groaned and he whimpered and a few times he almost made coherent words, but mostly he just made noises.

  Hill cursed up a blue streak as Rodriguez helped him back to the helicopter. His face was swollen and the thing sticking out of his skull shivered with every step they took, but it stayed where it was. The man was feverish, and he could understand that.

  The alien thing was dead. No two ways around that. It was dead when he pulled Tomlin away and it was dead when he came back around. He tried to pull it toward the helicopter and quickly gave up. He was a strong man, but no way in hell he was moving that thing.

  Hyde was dead. He found the poor bastard as he headed back for the copter one last time. By that point more emergency vehicles were coming. He’d known there was going to be a problem when the sheriff played twenty questions.

  The storms were worse than ever by the time he got the rotors moving, and there was no choice but to go up into the storm. No choice at all, because if the cops found him there would be questions that he wasn’t supposed to answer.

  The winds did their best to knock his ass into the trees and then into the Ferris wheel and then into the ground. Below him he saw five cop cars and at least two ambulances heading for the fairground. They were definitely in for an unpleasant surprise.

  The body of the alien was a problem.

  They couldn’t be allowed to see that. It was too damning and too controversial. But what could he do about it?

  Rodriguez wanted to call the home base and warn them, but that would be foolish in the extreme. The radio frequency was supposed to be secure, but he knew that was about as accurate as saying the moon was made of cheese. Someone somewhere would always be listening in. The conversations could be coded, they could be conducted in a make-believe language, but someone somewhere would be listening and would crack the code.

  He’d made it up to four hundred feet when the winds fought for control of the helicopter and almost won. It was while he was fighting to regain control of the bird that the skies behind him suddenly lit up with the most violent explosion he’d ever seen.

  Holy shit!

  “Night became day.” He’d heard the statement before, and understood the notion, but for a few seconds it became reality. The light was so bright that he was nearly blinded. A loud squawk of feedback came over his radio and did its best to deafen him. A moment later the copter shuddered and jerked as a massive wind hit it hard enough to send him into a spin.

  He pulled out, but just barely, and headed back for the base.

  Rodriguez did a lot of work in covert operations. He didn’t fight the good fight. He didn’t fight the bad fight. He flew into areas where he wasn’t supposed to be, and he flew back out of them with no one the wiser. He’d taken flights through war zones. He’d safely made his way through jungles while flying twenty feet above the trees and dodging bullets. He was, in short, a damned fine pilot.

  When all was said and done, Rodriguez had pulled out two of the Reapers and left the area. He could verify that the Predator was dead when he took off. That was all he could verify, though.

  Traeger wouldn’t be thrilled. The general wouldn’t be happy, either, but they still had some of their new toys and it was possible they would find the alien’s ship. All that anyone knew for certain was that it was likely close to where the carnival had been located.

  The carnival that was gone. And Rodriguez was good with that, too. Because he’d made it away and all the evidence of what had gone down had been destroyed.

  He called that a win.

  * * *

  William Traeger was not happy.

  On the one hand, yes, he was delighted. He was now in charge of Project Stargazer. That one went in the win column. There was evidence to support the existence of the otherworldly life form. Big plus. That was another win.

  The Predator was missing and presumed dead. Okay, that sucked, but it was what it was.

  The Reapers were dead. Most of them at any rate.

  He looked over at the general where he sat with his two remaining men. They were both in medically induced comas while their bodies tried to heal from the severe damage inflicted by the Predator.

  The old man talked to them every day. He filled them in on the latest news as if they could hear every word. Maybe they could. Traeger had never been in a coma, and figured he’d try to avoid that particular experience for as long as he could.

  Woodhurst was just being a good little soldier. In the four weeks that had passed since the Predator had escaped and caused all kinds of damage, the man had proven efficient and loyal. He had a passion for the program, and that went a long way.

  The explosion that took out the fairground destroyed a small portion of Deer Water Springs, Florida, as well. According to Miguel Rodriguez, the Predator’s control gauntlet had been damaged. There was a spear stuck through it. It must have still done its job, though.

  That was a blessing. A damned fine blessing. The explosion was big, but small enough that they could conceal it and say that the local levee had failed, leading to the floods that wiped out part of the town and the surrounding area. All thanks to a screw-up on the part of the Corps of Engineers—at least that was what the press was told.

  And it was true. The levee had broken.

  A good cover-up was essential in their line of business.

  Maybe he was happy after all.

  The alien faceplate was being examined very carefully. So far it held its secrets. The wrist gauntlet had been meticulously assessed, and had offered up several sound bites that would have sent Orologas into a fit of ecstasy. There were full conversations recorded on that thing, and Traeger had no doubt that eventually they would crack the language barrier. Several inept linguists were already trying and failing. That pissed him off.

  Orologas would have been a better choice, because the man had possessed a passion that bordered on obsession. That was one of the reasons he chose to keep Woodhurst around. The man had a lot of clout in his own right, and he cared about Stargazer. Really cared. That kind of passion was difficult to replace.

  So Woodhurst got to stay around as long as he played by the rules. Thus far he was playing very nicely. Traeger would watch him and make sure it stayed that way. He could replace the man in a second flat—he already had a list of candidates lined up. But better the devil you know, and he knew Woodhurst well enough to keep him satisfied. Though on a short leash.

  Church came over with a clipboard full of forms. He looked nervous.

  “Got the latest papers for you.”

  “Anything good?”

  “There’s the possibility that a transmission got out.”

  “Come again?”

  Church just stared at him, then replied, “Might be that the Predator we dealt with got a transmission out to his people. Maybe a warning that things went wrong.” Traeger gave him the stink eye and he stepped back, holding up his hands in surrender. “Might be nothing. We don’t know. There was a serious electrical discharge when the explosion happened, and some of the guys think that maybe a transmission was masked in that. They’re trying to make certain one way or the other, but so far there’s no proof of anything but a lot of noise.”
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  Traeger nodded. He’d mention it to the general and see what the man thought about it. For the moment, however, Woodhurst was busy with his boys.

  * * *

  He’d said all he needed to say. Really, he could have read them a few pages of the local white pages and the two young men on either side of him would have been none the wiser for it. On his left Hill rested in a coma as his body tried to compensate for multiple skull fractures and some serious brain swelling. There were also a few holes punched in him that had become infected. Every day he got better, but it was by miniscule amounts.

  Still, Keyes was “guardedly optimistic” about his chances.

  On the other side was Tomlin. Sepsis was the criminal in this case. He’d had half of his internal organs literally dragged through the mud while Rodriguez was trying to save him. His body was fighting the worst of the infections, but the pain levels were rough enough that they weren’t letting him wake up during the long battle.

  “Okay, boys,” he said. “That’s it for today, time for you to get some rest.” He sighed and stood up from the chair where he’d been resting his backside.

  “You’re going to get better,” he added. “I mean that. You’re going to get better and we’re going to try this again. I know it doesn’t seem like it, boys, but I’m proud of you and what you accomplished. You took out that thing—twice. The second time with only half the team up and functioning.”

  He sighed and looked from Hill to Tomlin. From Tomlin to Hill.

  “I’m proud of you. Pappy would be proud. Time to get better though, so we can show everyone how it’s done.”

  Neither of the soldiers answered him.

  He was an optimist. He believed that someday soon they would. Until then he would hold his vigils and he would do something that had been alien to him for a long time.

  He would pray.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author would like to thank Carol Roeder, Nicole Spiegel, and Steve Tzirlin at Twentieth Century Fox for all of their input and assistance, and to thank Nick Landau, Vivian Cheung, Laura Price, Steve Saffel, David Lancett, Hayley Shepherd, Cameron Cornelius, and all of the fine folks at Titan Books for their endless support and help. Thanks especially to Shane Black and Fred Dekker and Jim Thomas and John Thomas for the source and inspiration.